Learning Spanish

Well it's been lazy times here in Mexico. Usually I try to use my time well but lately have just been letting the days flow by and have not been getting much done. Also I used an energetic ascension code as I thought it was time to jump up a level so I spent a few days spaced out and sleeping a lot. Last night I had a great chat with Alan and Denise from our old Matrix practice group in Vancouver and that helped me get back on track.

Sitting under the stars tonight amidst the rhapsody of cricket songs, I realize that spring has completely arrived. The days are sunny and quite hot and I no longer need to sleep in my long underwear at night in the unheated apartment. Even though I'm making interesting new friends here, I do find myself missing the Matrix practice groups and wishing there were opportunities to practice here. I've taken to writing long posts on the Matrix message board to keep some connection with the community. After reading Fred Alan Wolfe's introduction to quantum physics, I was hoping for a good argument when I questioned the standard interpretation of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle but people agreed with me. So I've taken to reading a book on quantum computing to see if anything connects.


My Spanish classes started off a little shaky. On the first day, I understood about half of what the dynamic maestra said. But I decided to stay and walked back down to the registrar and signed up and bought the textbook. The next day of class we had a surprise test. Our instructor was going to exempt me but I opted to write it to find out how much I'd learned by studying "Spanish in 10 Minutes a Day".

The next day she took up the test by reading everyone's answers and asking us to decide if they were right or wrong. She didn't give names except for the really funny asnwers, after which she would make a caricature of a serious face and say the person's name. Then everyone would break out laughing. There was one question that I hadn't understood but I had heard someone behind me say it meant "What are you wearing?" So I had made a list of the clothing that I'd learned. Unfortunately the question turned out to be "Are you tired?" So everyone got a good laugh at that. If it was a high school class the students behind me would have deliberately mentioned the wrong information as a good practical joke! But already it was easy to see that the class was all in the same boat and just having fun with each other, so I fit right in. And I did end up doing quite well on the test.

But there was an unusual ritual that took me a few days to figure out. Every day about halfway through the class there would be a knock on the door. The maestra would open the door and a friend of hers would be there with a different large flower in full bloom each time. I wondered if this was a standard practice in a Mexican University and thought about recommending it when I return to Jarvis. But before long everyone began talking about Valentine's Day, which is much more important here than in Canada.

So sitting in class watching the maestra with a flower on her desk as she wrote on the white board with a dried-out blue marker, I decided to drop by the stationery store after class. (The stationery store was easy to find because it was next to the cell phone store, one of my personal landmarks). I bought two plumonas then found a gift store on the way home and bought a gift bag and some ribbon.* The next day I added the gift bag to the small pile on the maestra's desk. She came in and was thrilled to see everything, and even though some of the other gifts were thoughtful and beautiful, she held up the plumonas twice with a gleeful smile. A gift from one teacher to another.

A few days later she told us we were going to have another test and held up some home-made cue cards. So before class the next day we were asking each other what we thought the test was about when the maestra again swept into the room and handed out three cards to each of us. She wanted us to make sentences with the cards. One person would read a card and everyone who had a matching verb or pronoun was to hold up their card. She pretended to keep score on the board. It was a fantastic learning activity, one that I hope to adapt to my math class at some point.

By now I'm getting to know most of the people in the class and somehow I've ended up in the rowdy corner where we have a lot of fun. I'm thinking of starting up a study group as it is good to take a good two or three hours a day outside of class to review and to look ahead. Today a few of us went to the gringo cafe for lunch and stayed there for a long time. Then this woman from upstate New York, Christina, and I went to the library to drink Corona and review the section of the book that we had both missed in January. Before we knew it, it was almost supper time. That is what I mean about the days flowing by.

* One thing about Mexico, is things just normally show up when you need them. You don't have to go looking for them. It's kind of the opposite of Canada, where the things you deliberately go shopping for have mysteriously disappeared from the shelves by the time you get to them.